How to succeed in Google Discover

Google Discover is a mobile experience that helps users find information they didn’t know they needed. Here’s how to use it for your brand. Discover was previously known as Google Feed, which uses the data the search engine has collected about you to create a personalized content feed to proactively provide relevant content. As machine learning and artificial intelligence continue to improve, this new form of discovery is likely to become more common and accurate.

As an SEO expert, you already know the importance of content that answers query intent. But what happens when Internet users don’t know what information they need?

Google first released Google Discover in 2018 to address this problem.

Available only on mobile devices, it does more than just respond to queries by predicting user behavior and delivering content it thinks you’ll find interesting and valuable.

Taking user activity into account to deliver results, it offers a new and powerful way to drive web traffic.

Google Discover can include a variety of different types of content, including news, articles, videos, ads, and special rich results like live sports scores. It appears on Google's homepage and is highly personalized for each user.

In this article, we’ll take a closer look at this technology and show you how to take advantage of it.

How does Google Discover work?

Once content is indexed, Google makes it eligible to appear in Discover and Google has determined that the content does not violate itsContent Policy.

and TikTok and Facebook Similar to the AI-driven video recommendations offered by platforms like , Google Discover uses algorithms to create a customized feed.

Using information gleaned from user data, Discover pushes the search engine toward “query-less search,” where understanding individual users replaces understanding individual queries.

Google Discover automatically displays personalized content based on a user's:

• Search history.
• Browser history.
• Application activity.
• Location (depending on your Google Account settings and privacy settings).

Google Discover uses your information to identify and display topics, called "interests," that Google thinks are relevant to you.

What's interesting?

To get a deeper understanding of Google Discover interests, I looked at the 700+ Google Discover interests (organized by SEO provided by community members).

While this sample size is very small compared to all the potential interest, there are some noteworthy observations.

Interests related to sports and entertainment are most common

While my Discover feed focuses on who former Bachelor Peter Weber is dating, I imagine everyone else’s feed is filled with the latest sports updates.

It focuses mainly on hobbies and activities

Whatever you do for fun — whether it's baking or beekeeping — you'll likely see content about your favorite after-get off work activity.

Brands also have a strong influence

Nearly every submission features a specific brand or local business.

While Discover is designed to recommend new content to users, it will still remember the stores and restaurants you frequent.

SEO Has Its Own Category

We love SEO so much that it has its own category.

Thanks to all the SEOs who filled out my Google form.

Below is a visualization of all submitted user interests, organized by category (i.e. finance, education, etc.) and entity type (i.e. brand, product, person, etc.).

User Input

Users can also provide direct feedback to further customize their feeds by following or unfollowing topics, selecting “show more” or “show less,” and opting out of seeing content from certain publishers.

Sometimes Google will directly prompt users to provide feedback.

Is it possible to optimize for Google Discover?

Yes, you can optimize for Google Discover, a personalized recommendation engine designed to provide users with relevant and engaging content based on their interests and browsing history.

To optimize for Google Discover, it’s important to focus on creating high-quality, engaging content that resonates with your target audience.

The main difference between traditional SEO and Google Discover optimization is that the focus shifts from the query to the user.

While traditional SEO aims to deliver the most relevant results for a specific query, Google Discover focuses on delivering content that matches the user’s interests without the need for an explicit search query.

There are a number of things publishers can do to increase their visibility in Discover.

These include:

• Create high-quality, engaging content.
• Add structured data to your articles.
• Post content about trending topics.
• Use high-quality images and videos.
• Optimize page experience.
• Have a strong EEAT.

The importance of expertise, experience, authority and trust (EEAT)

Google Discover strives to recommend content that is not only interesting but also trustworthy, reliable, and credible.

The EEAT (Expertise, Experience, Authority, and Trustworthiness) elements play a key role in determining the suitability of recommended content. You didn’t expect Google to recommend anything, did you?

When creating content for Google Discovery, it’s important to be selective and prioritize topics that align with your expertise or the expertise and experience of the content creator.

Focusing on providing valuable and relevant information on these topics to build authority in your niche over time will produce better long-term results than broad topics that aren’t closely related to your brand and expertise.

Once you’ve identified a suitable topic, take the following steps to improve your EEAT signal:

• Produce high-quality content:Create well-researched, accurate, and informative content that brings value to your audience. Avoid publishing misleading, sensational, or low-quality content that could undermine trust.
• Regularly updated content:Clearly indicate publication dates, update outdated articles, and annotate update dates when relevant.
• Demonstrate expertise:Highlight the author or content creator’s credentials, qualifications, and experience to demonstrate expertise. Include author bios, professional backgrounds, certifications, or industry recognitions.
• Leverage structured data:Use article and author tags to provide search engines with clearly annotated information.
• Develop a strong track record:Continue to publish relevant, high-quality content to build a consistent track record and establish authority in your niche.
• Ensuring transparency:Identify sources, cite reliable references, and be transparent about editorial policies, fact-checking processes, quality assurance, and any affiliations or sponsorships.
• Improve website experience: Create a trustworthy, user-friendly experience by focusing on factors like mobile-friendliness, page load speed, HTTPS, and overall site design.

By following these steps, you can enhance your EEAT factors, provide valuable content, and build a trustworthy and credible image, thereby increasing your chances of getting featured in Google Discover.

Isn’t Google Discover just news?

Well, a little bit.

One of the goals of Google Discover is to provide fresh content - scroll through the Discover feed, which is mostly news.

But when clients in other industries start seeing Discover traffic in Google Search Console (GSC), it’s time to investigate.

I analyzed 12 months of Google Discover traffic to over 11,000 URLs from 62 domains. Of these 11,000 URLs:

• 46% from a news website.
• 44% from an e-commerce website.
• 7% from entertainment website.
• 2% from a travel website.

The remaining 1% come from other industries, including:

• B2B.
• car.
• educate.
• finance.
• healthy.

Research Results

1. News website received 99% hits

While News accounted for less than half of the URLs analyzed (46%), it received 99% of “discover” clicks and had significantly more clicks per page.

One news domain included in the analysis found that more than 30% of its total web traffic came from Discover, while other publishers reported that in some months, Google Discover drove more traffic than organic search.

News content may be shown to a large, broad audience, while content from other industries is targeted to smaller audiences based on specific interests.

Google highlighted this idea in its announcement of Google Discover, saying:

“When it comes to news, we think it’s important that everyone has access to the same information.”

Key Points: Google Discover is a major traffic driver for news publishers and can be used to reach a large, broad audience.

2. Blog posts are common in all other industries

For non-news sites, the remaining 1% of hits (still totaling more than 1 million over the past 12 months) are spread across different types of content.

The most popular type of content across industries is blog posts.

Blog topics that appear in Google Discover are highly relevant to specific interests/hobbies, such as hiking, makeup, and nutrition.

also:

• Clickflow to product pages for e-commerce website 49%, which includes product category and product detail pages.
• VideoPages with primary content (i.e., actor interviews and movie trailers) had the highest click-through rate (16%).
• Special offers, mainly travel or hotel deals with limited time/supply prices, accounting for the largest proportion of clicks on travel websites (53%).

Key Points: Non-news content is very interest-focused and may be shown to a smaller, more targeted audience.

3. Discovery content usually has a short shelf life

Consistent with Google Discover’s focus on delivering fresh content, most of the URLs in this study received traffic within only three to four days, with the majority of that traffic occurring one to two days after publication.

However, some more mature, evergreen content can drive longer-term traffic.

This is a result of Google Discover serving up evergreen content to meet new or changing user interests.

When I see more mature, evergreen content in my personal Discover feed, I search for similar topics two to three days prior.

Key Points: Most pages in Discover have a short shelf life of about three to four days, but evergreen content can drive long-term traffic.

4. Users respond well to discovery content

One of the most striking things about Google Discover is the high click-through rate (CTR): 11% for all analyzed pages.

Excluding news sites (which make up the bulk of the data), the average hit rate was 6%.

Looking at the same 62 domains, the click-through rate for traditional searches was 4%.

Unfortunately, these numbers are not directly comparable because CTR is calculated as clicks ÷ impressions = CTR, and impressions are measured differently in Discovery than in traditional search.

Here’s how:

• When a user opens a search results page that contains a URL (even if the results are not scrolled into view), a search for that URL is logged.Number of impressions.
• Discoveries are only recorded when the Discover card is scrolled into viewNumber of impressions.

Key Points: Pages in Google Discover have a higher click-through rate than traditional search; however, this may be due to differences in how impressions are measured rather than differences in user behavior.

How to connect with users on Google Discover

In traditional search, the query serves as the connection point between the user’s needs and relevant content (i.e., the user is hungry and searches for [food near me], and Google displays local restaurants).

Google Discover surfaces content before user needs are fulfilled, “powered by the strength of the match between article content and user interests.”

Without keyword research and query reporting, the traditional content creation process is limited—but there are still ways to increase your chances of appearing in Discover.

Mobile-friendly

Google Discover is only accessible on mobile devices, so this is obvious.

But by checking the Mobile Usability report in Google Search ConsoleAnd it's always good to cover your bases by making sure there are no mistakes. If you find any problems, correct them immediately.

Focus content on entities

An interest is an entity, object, or concept that can be uniquely identified.

They can be anything from general hobbies to niche interests to specific brands and businesses.

usePhysical browser for marketing center, you can view the relationships between entities and see which entities are associated with your brand, industry, products, and more.

Determine which entities serve as the connection points between your brand and your users.

Follow the trends

Google Discover works much the same way as feeds on social networking platforms.

To increase your chances of being featured, keep an eye on what’s happening on social media. Follow trending events and topics.

Make sure you have optimized the social sharing buttons on your website.

Create content that is relevant, useful, and interesting to your audience

You are no longer constrained by search volume.

Embrace this new found freedom.

Once you identify the connection points, get specific and go deep.

Interest-based content is personalized, so write content that resonates with your most passionate users.

One way to do this is to identify intersections and relationships between topics (i.e., “best ski resorts near Pennsylvania,” “winter running tips”).

Bonus points if you can tie your content to current events.

As mentioned above, make sure your topic also aligns with your expertise and that your content and website demonstrate strong EEAT.

Write a good page title

To increase your chances of appearing in Discover, you should make sure all of your page titles capture the essence of the page’s content without being overly clickbait.

This helps the algorithm quickly determine what your content is about and whether it’s relevant to a specific user.

Includes high-quality images

In addition to creating content that users will find interesting, the best way to enhance your content on Discover is to use a 1,200-pixel wideLarge, high-quality images, and throughmax-image-preview:large settingOr useAMPEnabled.

Avoid using your website logo as your image.

Revisit your video strategy

Videos are prominent in Google Discover, which is consistent with Google’sThe focus shifts from text toA more intuitive way to find information.

While video only accounted for 17% of content in this analysis, this does not include Youtube According to data from , the site hosts the majority of videos that appear in Google Discover.

It can be hard to measure, but creating engaging videos and optimizing your YouTube channel can help improve your brand’s presence in Google Discover, and in traditional search as well, as 19% of desktop search results include a video carousel, and 92% of those videos come from YouTube.

Avoid exaggeration and shock tactics

Google Discover is committed to providing relevant and trustworthy information to mobile users. One way it does this is by penalizing sites that use misleading information or exaggerate details in their previews.

Likewise, any tactics designed for “cheap clicks” should be avoided, such as content designed to anger, provoke, or offend.

Utilize the follow feature

One of the important parts of Discover is the follow feature, which allows users to get the latest updates from the websites they follow.

This feature is available in English Chrome Android By default, the user RSS or Atom feed.

If you have multiple feeds on your site, you can The section tells Google which feed to focus on to optimize your “Follow” feature.

To ensure that Google can find your feed, make sure your Robots.txt The file is not blocking your feed, your feed is up to date, and you have included the title and link elements.

Track your performance

Once you have content on Google Discover, you can use the Discover Performance ReportMonitor its operation.

Here you'll provide information about impressions, clicks, and CTR for any content that appeared on Explore in the past 16 months. Please note that you need to have a minimum number of impressions in order for this data to appear.

For more tips on optimizing your Discover content, Lily Ray provides a list of 10 effective strategies.

Key Points

Google Discover presents an incredible opportunity for forward-thinking webmasters and SEOs – and it’s definitely one you should take advantage of.

The best part is that it should fit perfectly with your existing strategy. You still want to create high-quality content targeted to your target audience.

You need to make sure your content is indexed and your site is mobile responsive. But these are things you should be doing anyway.

Remember, like all SEO, optimizing for Google Discover is an ongoing process.

However, if your content is good and you follow the best practices discussed here, Google bots will start selecting your content more often as auto-suggestions to users.

This means more visibility, more traffic, and more conversions.